What’s Happening with the Price of your Shopping Basket?

Do you follow the shopping basket price saga? What should we expect this new year? Will it rise or fall?

At the beginning of December, all media channels announced a steep rise in food prices in Canada for 2017. Referring to the predictions published in Canada’s Food Price Report 2017 by Dalhousie University, the media gave us bad news, that an average family might pay up to $420 extra to feed itself in 2017. This increase might be caused by the weakness of the Canadian dollar and the protectionist measures probably taken by the new Trump administration in the United States.

But another study carried out by BMO Capital Markets tells us that, on the contrary, the price of a basket of groceries is diminishing, mostly thanks to competition between different supermarkets. The financial institution recognizes the limits of its own analysis because of its small sample size (each month, it reviews 70 product prices, while supermarkets sell more than 20 000). But according to them this method nonetheless offers a decent outlook.

As for us, who, for the last ten years, week after week, monitor the prices of hundreds of products in the 100 banners throughout Canada, we are beginning to see the same trend as last year in January. Do you remember the price of cauliflower at $8/each in January and February 2016? This week it’s gone down to $4/each, and if conditions worsen in the United States, prices could unfortunately rise once more.

How to Stop Your Grocery Bill from Rising

There isn’t always a miracle solution, but you can still make some savings if you plan your purchases. In practice:

Design a menu based on supermarket discounts.

Make a shopping list at home (to avoid impulse purchases in the shop and waste)

For even more help, I invite you to use our SOS Plus service. Week after week, we follow the discounts of 100 banners across Canada and inform you of the REAL bargains. With an investment of less than $1/week, you will easily save $1000/year.